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Remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare?

What if steady really does win the race?

How is your sense of pressure and urgency SLOWING you down?

When we have a scarcity mindset, we think to have more we have to do more. What if to have more we just have to think more?

So last week, we talked about your One Simple Strategy. And so I hope you did that work to find your one simple strategy, whether it’s this week, this quarter this year. And if you didn’t, I would encourage you to go back to that episode and figure out your one simple strategy.

Now what I’ve been doing my one of my strategies this year, has been just a decision overall to let go and slow down and constrained because what I have been doing in my business almost since inception, was I would go, go, go and then I would be mentally exhausted or physically exhausted or emotionally exhausted or all three. And I would slow down, but not on purpose. And sometimes I would even get stuck. And I would stop and I wouldn’t want to get started again.

It’s almost like if you’re walking or running a half marathon, or some kind of race and you just can’t go anymore. I’m gonna stop and rest a minute and you actually stop. Then it’s a lot harder to get going than it is if you simply slow down and rest  but you still keep going.

And so when I imagine that analogy in my business, I thought in a way I’m going to try that same strategy in my business, because in a long race, an endurance race, 10 miles or half marathon or full marathon or an ultra marathon.  I just know that in those longer races, it’s fine to sprint for a mile but if you try to sprint for an entire marathon, you’re probably going to not finish the race.

So I want you to think about this in your business. You’re  trying to win; you’re not trying to sprint. Remember that building your business is an endurance race. It is not a sprint. So yeah, you might be able to keep that up for a mile, maybe two. But you’re probably not going to be able to sustain that pace for 26 miles or more. So think about and so don’t push yourself so hard that you then have no choice but to stop. Pace yourself.

They say that in races, pace yourself so that you have something left to surge forward at the end. And so if you consider this in your business, what I kept doing is I kept pushing myself, you know, like, I’ll just push through I’ll just white-knuckle it. I’ll just keep going. Just go as hard as I can. And then I would get done. I’d be like I gotta rest. I’m gonna sit down. And you know, in the beginning of my business  I might be sitting out of the race for three months. And that was not my intention. So what I’ve learned to do as I’ve matured in my business is I’ve learned how to pace myself. I’ve learned that if everything is a priority, nothing’s a priority. And if I’m working on 10 things at a time, chances are I’m not going to finish any of them. Or at least it’s going to take me 10 times longer than it would have had I just constrained and focused on one or two, even three at a time.

And so that’s what I do now and I talked about that a little bit in my last episode of One simple strategy. How I focus on three different areas of my business, but I’m only ever focusing on one at a  time.  The other thing I’ve learned is to slow down in order to get more done.

I used to like, go go, go, this is urgent. I’ve got to get this done now. And then I would skip over things that I didn’t have either the capacity or the learning to do. I didn’t want to slow down and learn something new. I would just skip right past it and then I would get stuck later on. So my approach, my strategy this year is  when I feel like there’s something that is blocking me or when it feels like there’s something I’m lacking, then I slow down so that I don’t have to stop. When you slow down, at least you don’t stop. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. If it’s even if it’s in motion going slowly. Going slowly is much better than stopped.

So I’ve decided that I am going to slow down. And what that has allowed me to do is to actually get more done. When I try to go fast, fast, fast, I end up getting stuck. If you think about it like this: if you get a car stuck in the mud, or if you get a car stuck in the snow, if you go full throttle on the gas pedal,  the only thing that’s probably going to do is get you more stuck.  You’re going to spin and spin and dig a deeper hole for yourself. But what you do is you ease onto the gas or you ease onto the brake and you rock yourself back and forth until you get yourself unstuck, right?

When you go full throttle on the gas, it’s only gonna get you more stuck. So I’m implementing this in my business where I just go slow and I see. Okay, what is it that I really need to be doing right now in order to move forward?And what that might look like is knowing what my priorities are in any given month. And then looking at what is the next smallest simplest step that I can take on that priority. And I think of the smallest increment of action that I can take on that priority. And then the next opportunity, the next space I have in my calendar, then that is the next step that I’ll work on. And so it’s not with a sense of urgency. It’s not with a sense of pressure. It’s with a sense of abundance. And it’s with a sense of time and space to do what I need to do. And knowing and trusting that I will accomplish what I need to accomplish, precisely when I need to accomplish it. So it’s being at peace with where I am accepting where I am loving the process, loving the journey of getting to the destination and not putting any pressure on myself or or feeling any sense of urgency to get there.

Accepting the journey as it is, knowing that I am going through the process and I am learning and I am doing and I’m being exactly what I need to have do  or be or see, at that particular time. So it’s slowing down to do more. So yeah, in this moment, you might not do more. But in the long term, you will progress faster than if you try to go fast, fast, fast, fast. So that’s what I want you to do this week: every time you feel that sense of pressure, that sense of urgency, instead of moving fast I want you to slow down and I want you to notice what would it take to get there. What is the one simple smallest step I can take next to move me closer to that destination? What is one small simple thing that I can do to close that gap? And I guarantee you nine times out of 10. Maybe 9.9 times out of 10 it’s not going to be to move faster or to move, do more. It’s probably actually going to be to do less, so that you can see more, so that then you can move forward and do more.

I’ll see you next week.